6/22: 0500 Bermuda time after a beautiful sunrise saw a pod of spotted dolphins. They didn’t hang around long, but 2 jumped about 12 ft out of the water! We were moving about 5 kts, but still too slow for them, I guess.
We motored about 4.5 hrs when it was truly dead calm, but when I came on watch at 0300 we were seeing 7 kts, all from one direction (as opposed to all directions). Bestill my heart! I started setting sails and got 4 kts of boat speed out of that. Close – hauled we get more apparent wind, then it increased a little near sunrise giving us 5 kts of boat speed with 10-12 kts of apparent wind, about 8-10 kts of true wind. That may not sound like much, but it’s a very pleasant way to get somewhere. That’s 120 nm / day, which would be a dream if we could do it every day! 1937 UTC, we are screamin’! The wind has been slowly picking up during the day and now it’s 14-18 but feels much stronger. We are making 6.5 kts boat speed plus a 2 kt current are doing 8-9 kts SOG (speed over ground). If we could keep this up we’d be there in 4 days!
We double reefed the mainsail but the genoa is hard put. I’d rather have the Yankee jib up, and will decide before dark. We are trying to work south a little, farther from the “buzz saw” storm to the north. As the pressure is dropping, more south would ease wind a little. Though I can’t help but like our speed. So glad again I bought that brand new hank-on genoa!! This is sailing!
Reefing took a long time. 1st reef line got sucked into the 2nd reef sheave and jammed pretty badly. I got to show Simon how to use a midshipman’s hitch to clear a jammed line. Fun with knots!
Lat 37.088008 Lon -44.28855